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What fun the day after an election is! The winners are bragging. The losers are blaming. The false prophets are rationalizing, and those few who called the election correctly are basking in their accidental and transitory glory. The explainers are telling us why losing was really in the long run a good thing.

Yesterday’s election was a blowout. The Democrats lost and lost big time. Any “blessings in disguise because this will make the Republicans govern,” is an opiate intended to kill the pain. Any oracular pronouncement that this is the end of Democrats, the Union, the World is silly. The pundits want to know if this was a rejection of Obama personally or just his programs? They want to analyze the trends, the turn-out, the ethnic make-up of the electorate in order to see the bigger and deeper picture. They want to look at the historic patterns. Off year elections are costly to incumbents. Okay true. But these incumbents look more recumbent—particularly the Democrats.

The experts are making this more complicated than it is. Democrats got turned out and rejected for a very understandable reason, and it isn’t particularly personal or about Obama or his character. Nor is it about ideology and swings from left to right. We are sometimes idiotic but seldom ideological.

This election was a vote of no confidence in the efficacy of government. The Democrats are seen, and portray themselves, as the party of government. When they don’t seem to know what they’re doing, they’re going to lose. The Republicans portray themselves as pro-economy and pro-business. When they drive (or are blamed for driving) the economy off the rails and into a ditch, they lose.

Yes, John McCain lost partially because of Sarah Palin, but more importantly, he lost because we were in financial free-fall. Banks were on the brink of failure—and some indeed did fail. Major brokerages were dying. Jobs were falling into an abyss. The party of prosperity failed in its stated mission.

This election was about governmental competence. The Democratic Party believes in government but couldn’t govern and blames it all on Republican intransigence. While there is some truth to this, there isn’t enough truth for the electorate. We know it’s hard and the opposition is always fierce and dedicated to your failure. But we know that this isn’t new. George W was a “usurper who stole the election.” Bill Clinton was a crook, a murderer and a philanderer. Okay, one charge was true.

When the party of government can’t even produce a website for Health Care, our confidence in their ability to run the nation and the health care industry is shaken. Never mind if Obamacare is good or bad, will work or not, its introduction was a disaster. This was bad first impression and left a bad taste in the mouths of the electorate.

When the party of Government can’t regulate the Secret Service and keep them out of bordellos, keep an armed man out of an elevator with the president or patrol the perimeter of the White House, it shakes the faith of the otherwise supportive.

When people in the government mess up and no one is fired, the electorate becomes ill at ease. Minor figures may lose jobs but those in charge usually skate. A president or cabinet member may say “I take responsibility,” but this is a meaningless phrase without accountability and heads rolling.

When the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize can neither successfully end a war nor fight a war, there is an understandable loss of his personal prestige. People don’t think he’s a bad guy or stupid or crooked. They just don’t believe that he’s put together a team in which they can have much confidence. When the President of the United States is faced with ISIS on a brutal rampage across northern Syria and Iraq and admits that he doesn’t have a strategy, an incredulous public shrinks from his administration with the “pity and awe” that Aristotle wrote are the essential elements of classical tragedy. The utter failure of the strategy later enacted gives no comfort to the American people.

Democrats are now challenging the Republicans to govern. But that’s the Democratic agenda. The Republican agenda is to create jobs and wealth. These are the markers on which they will be judged. Today, the Democrats just have to deal with having failed to live up to expectations (some unreasonable) and promises (some unrealistic, but made none-the-less).

Today’s the day, young people. And more than ever, which has been made abundantly clear in the ruthless, circuslike midterm election campaigning by what truly have become political “characters,” we cannot afford to disengage from politics. Not now.

Tonight, President Barack Obama will host a townhall meeting geared toward young adults. The hour-long discussion, sponsored by MTV, BET and CMT networks, will air live at 4 p.m. E.T. Live coverage will also be available on MTV.com, BET.com and CMT.com.

Questions will be solicited via Twitter. Here’s how to ask your questions as described via The White House Blog.

The President will be taking questions from the live audience and Twitter. To ask your question, just use the hashtag #ask plus the topic of your question. For example, if your question is about jobs use #askjobs, if it’s about energy use #askenergy. You can also comment the event using the hashtag #comment. Be sure to tune in tomorrow at 4 PM EDT to see if your question gets asked.

Our job as U.S. citizens didn’t stop in 2008 with the presidential election. Let’s keep the fire in our bellies.